00:00Did you know that India is building a megastructure visible from space?
00:05It's happening in Andhra Pradesh, a region home to 50 million people and some of the worst climates on Earth.
00:11When it rains here, it pours enough to cause massive floods.
00:15When it dries, it turns fertile ground into a wasteland.
00:19This ambitious construction is supposed to solve the issue once and for all.
00:23However, if this multi-billion dollar project backfires, the consequences could be devastating.
00:29Let's see why.
00:31The second longest river in India is called the Godavari.
00:34During the monsoon season, this river acts like a fire hose that nobody can turn off.
00:39We aren't talking about a drizzly afternoon.
00:42From June to September, the sky practically unzips.
00:45The water level rises and the river transforms from a calm stream into a chaotic force that swallows entire villages in days.
00:54But that's not all.
00:55A huge amount of that fresh water goes completely to waste.
00:59It rushes past the villages and dumps straight into the Bay of Bengal.
01:03Once it hits the salty ocean, it's useless for drinking or farming.
01:06We're talking about billions of gallons of much-needed water disappearing into the sea every single year.
01:13Now, on the other hand, we have the Krishna River Basin, just a few hundred miles away.
01:19There, it's literally the opposite issue.
01:22Farmers are staring at dry cracks in the ground.
01:24They're praying for rain that never comes.
01:27And Krishna does not get strong monsoon support, and most of its water is already used up before it even reaches this region.
01:35By the time it arrives, it's more like a tired stream than a healthy river.
01:40That's why the authorities looked at the map and came up with a solution.
01:43Basically, take the excess water from the Angry River and push it over to the Dry River.
01:50This brings us to the Polo Varum.
01:52The engineers are building a structure that's a giant machine, not just a wall.
01:57It's built to connect these two massive water systems, like running a giant pipe from the side that has too much to the side that has almost nothing.
02:05The project combines a massive earth and rock dam with a hydropower plant and a network of canals.
02:12However, the most impressive part of this layout is the spillway.
02:17It's a giant complex of concrete, channels, and support systems.
02:21It looks less like a dam and more like a fortress built for titans.
02:26It's a gigantic safety valve for the earth.
02:28It stretches for close to a mile across, wider than 10 football fields placed side by side.
02:35And rises several dozen feet above the riverbed.
02:38It's fitted with dozens of huge steel gates, each one weighing hundreds of tons.
02:44And built to hold back walls of water until the system decides to let them go.
02:49The spillway is incredibly powerful.
02:52It has a discharge of around 5 million CUSICs.
02:55In simple terms, it can blast out millions of cubic feet of water every single second.
03:01That puts it in the same league as the spillway at China's Three Gorges Dam, one of the most powerful flood control structures on the planet.
03:10Engineers designed it to handle what they call a thousand-year flood.
03:14And no, that doesn't mean you need to mark your calendar for the year 3026.
03:18It just means there's a 0.1% chance that a flood this massive will hit the valley in any given year.
03:25Why are the architects so obsessed with these safety statistics?
03:30Because the location leaves no room for error.
03:33The Godavari Delta downstream is home to millions of people.
03:37If this project backfires, meaning the dam breaches or the gates fail during a storm,
03:42it wouldn't just be a leak.
03:44It would be a human-made tsunami.
03:47The water meant to save the region would instead wipe it off the map.
03:51The construction pace of the Polovarum project matches this insane scale.
03:57In 2019, the workers on this site set a Guinness World Record.
04:01They poured 42,000 cubic yards of concrete in exactly 24 hours.
04:07If you loaded all that concrete into standard mixers, you would fill 4,000 trucks.
04:14Line them up bumper to bumper, and you'd get a traffic jam stretching for 22 miles.
04:18Even with that in mind, the project still has a way to go.
04:23It's so big that it starts to bend its own surroundings.
04:27It won't just stop or redirect water.
04:30It might change the air itself.
04:33Once the dam is complete, it will hold a reservoir so large that it'll function like a brand new inland sea.
04:40Put that much water under the Indian sun, and something obvious will happen.
04:44It'll lift into the air.
04:46Day after day, the surface will turn into a giant steam engine sending moisture upward.
04:53Scientists call this a microclimate, but we call it accidental weather control.
04:59By creating a massive body of water, you change the local humidity and temperature.
05:04You're essentially installing a giant humidifier in a region that used to be dry.
05:08This is the part that makes experts nervous.
05:13What if they accidentally create a new climate problem while trying to solve the current one?
05:18Once you block a river and create a lake this big, you start messing with the heat and moisture in the air above.
05:26The system meant to control water on the ground ends up influencing the weather overhead too.
05:31Then, there is the issue of moving the water.
05:35Picture the state as two giant tanks.
05:38One is overflowing and about to burst.
05:41The other is dry.
05:42The engineers are trying to connect them with a massive pipe to balance the levels before either one becomes a disaster.
05:49How are they doing this?
05:50To pull this off, they're carving out the earth, digging two massive canals, each stretching more than 100 miles.
05:58These aren't simple ditches.
06:00They're artificial rivers carved to ignore the natural layout of the land and go where engineers tell them to go.
06:07In 2022, monsoon floods slammed into the site mid-build.
06:12Water forced its way past temporary barriers and damaged critical leak control work.
06:17The crew had to stop, assess the damage, and start restoring the damaged sections.
06:23And the risks aren't just about concrete breaking.
06:27The real cost of this project is human.
06:30To build the City of Water, you have to remove the real cities of people.
06:35When the reservoir fills, it will submerge nearly 250 square miles of land.
06:41That much water does not make room for anyone.
06:44Close to 200,000 people would have to be relocated.
06:48Old forests, tribal lands, and villages that stood for generations will disappear beneath the surface.
06:55This is the price of the project.
06:58So, with all this concrete and chaos, when does the ribbon get cut?
07:02Here's the twist.
07:04This project has been ongoing since the 1940s, back when the British were still in charge.
07:09It's a rare piece of infrastructure that has outlived conflicts and economic crashes, yet it's still under construction.
07:24Major parts of the main dam are incomplete.
07:27The reservoir cannot be filled to its full height.
07:29And key power systems have not been installed.
07:33Several resettlement zones also remain unfinished, which means the final stage of the project is still years away.
07:41Aside from the ambition and the scale, money is also the reason it takes so long.
07:47Early plans estimated about $1.5 billion.
07:50Today, the cost has passed $6.5 billion and keeps climbing.
07:57But is it worth the price?
07:59Depends on who you ask.
08:01For the farmers watching their fields dry out, the answer is yes.
08:04For the families watching their homes get swallowed by the reservoir, the answer is no.
08:10The latest deadline for completion is by the end of this decade, so there are no more excuses.
08:15The Polavarum Project is a testament to human ambition.
08:20It's humans looking at Mother Nature and saying,
08:22I think you put that river in the wrong place.
08:25Let me fix that for you.
08:26Will it work?
08:27And how well?
08:29We'll find out soon.
08:30Until then, the Godavari will keep flowing and overflowing,
08:34while the Krishna will keep shrinking, looking like an abandoned movie set.
08:38That's it for today.
08:40So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
08:45Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
08:49That's it for today.
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